Here is a proven winning strategy

No British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France, but as the new General Manager and Performance Director for Team Sky (Great Britain’s professional cycling team), Brailsford was asked to change that.

His approach was simple.

Brailsford believed in a concept that he referred to as the “aggregation of marginal gains.” He explained it as “the 1 percent margin for improvement in everything you do.” His belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just 1 percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.

They started by optimizing the things you might expect: the nutrition of riders, their weekly training program, the ergonomics of the bike seat, and the weight of the tires.

But Brailsford and his team didn’t stop there. They searched for 1 percent improvements in tiny areas that were overlooked by almost everyone else: discovering the pillow that offered the best sleep and taking it with them to hotels, testing for the most effective type of massage gel, and teaching riders the best way to wash their hands to avoid infection. They searched for 1 percent improvements everywhere.

Brailsford believed that if they could successfully execute this strategy, then Team Sky would be in a position to win the Tour de France in five years time.

He was wrong. They won it in three years.”

This is what will happen to your sales if you do not take account of marginal decline

Why should you apply this strategy to sales?

Sales people or sales teams that work on one improvement a week will start achieving more. The compound interest of this activity will raise turnover and profits. You will be in control of a sales process that becomes more profitable over time. In addition, you are more likely to create strong client relationships

In addition, you stop sending your sales into a serious decline. This may sound alarmist. So let me explain a little further.

Why is it dangerous not to have such a programme in place?

If you keep doing the same old thing you will suffer from marginal decline. Nothing major happens at first. But, little by little, you start experiencing one percent declines. Some customers move elsewhere. Others put you under more price pressure.

At the same time, your new sales will be undergoing a similar change. The new sales message you introduced a few years ago will no longer have quite the same effect. Prospects and customers become more used to your “special offers” and the techniques that you use.

Each of these elements may not add up to much. But the compound effect could have a very serious impact on your company. I have seen some printing companies that have been looking at restructuring or even deciding whether to continue in business or not. In many cases, this could have been avoided if they had adopted a programme of continuous sales improvement, based on one percent gains

How can you apply this strategy to sales?

Look for small changes that you can make in every part of your operation. There are some very simple things that can be done:

Set up a referral program

Qualify your prospects more quickly

Offer everyone an upsell

Create a proactive selling programme

Ask for feedback after jobs

None of these require a major change in the way you work. None of these take very much time to set up. But if you put all of these into action, and follow up with similar changes, the results can be dramatic. One company began turning their sales around after just four weeks from making some of these changes.

What will you do to put a plan like this into place?

Here are three things you can do straight away

Call a meeting for relevant staff and plan six to eight weekly projects

Set up accountability partners for everyone involved to make sure that changes are being made

This could be your chance to perform as well as the British cycling team!
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